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Mayors worry about infrastructure, violence

(AP) - Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak challenged
the nation to "have the guts to do what we need to" to pay for
bridge and infrastructure repairs.

"There's something deeply wrong with a country that spends
billions to destroy infrastructure halfway around the globe and
billions to try to repair it and doesn't stop a war that's sucking
cities dry across this country," he said Friday, six weeks after
an interstate highway bridge collapse in his city killed 13 people.

Miami Mayor Manuel Diaz bemoaned the ease in which guns can be
had.

"Regrettably, they're all over this country," Diaz said a day
after a Miami-Dade County police officer was killed in a gun
battle. "They're in the streets of our cities, and they're cheaper
today than buying a Playstation, and that does not speak well for
this country."

Recent tragedies helped highlight problems facing the nation
when 38 mayors and three governors gathered for a U.S Conference of
Mayors meeting on Friday, focusing attention on rebuilding
infrastructure and gun control, among other issues.

"The question we have to answer for ourselves is whether we
want to be the first generation of Americans to pass on the power
of the built infrastructure of this country to our children in a
weaker condition that we received it ourselves," said Maryland
Gov. Martin O'Malley. "I don't think that's what the people of our
country want."

But Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell noted it will cost an estimated
$1.6 trillion to repair aging bridges, roads and other
infrastructure, and that no one has pinpointed where that money
will be found. He suggested creating a federal capital budget.
States and cities have long had such budgets, funded mostly by
borrowing.

"Because we will never get this done unless we do that,"
Ryback said. "You have just seen a politician advocate more
spending. That has to be done."

As Diaz called on Congress to reauthorize the federal assault
weapons ban, New Jersey Gov. Jon S. Corzine recalled how three
college students were recently shot and killed execution-style in a
Newark schoolyard.

"We have a challenge in our communities, an incredible
challenge," Corzine said.

Trenton Mayor Douglas H. Palmer, the conference president, said
the mayors would press Congress and the presidential candidates to
support their agenda.